Cost-Based Ranking for Manufacturing Process Selection

Manufacturing process selection involves two steps. The first involves the screening of all available processes to determine whether they are technically capable of making the design; the second involves the ranking of those which are successful, using economic criteria. The ranking step requires techniques of cost-estimation. In seeking to achieve this, two problems are encountered. The first: that the design is still in an early stage at which little information is available; the second: that conventional cost-estimation techniques require detailed information and cannot easily be applied to widely diverse processes. A simple approach for this problem is presented. It is based on the idea of a resource-consumption cost model, applicable early in the design process. The system is described and a case study is used to demonstrate how it works.